The evening was set to be balmy, perfect for a picnic, even one destined to end in chaos. Light was dappling in the sloping back garden, enormous for London, and it had rarely looked so lovely. A glass of white wine stood gleaming on the window-ledge, chasing shadows across its surface. A squirrel hot-footed it across the lawn.

Juliette stood at her perfect white sink looking out the window fuming, ignoring the too-loud sounds of children misbehaving. Her husband had just called, and he would be home late again, although he'd promised he'd be back by six. He knew she was going out with her friends, and she really didn't want to be late for a change. Her children were sat at the table behind her, throwing their food around like hand grenades, and she just didn't have the energy to stop them anymore. She'd been effectively a single mother (apart from the nanny of course) for the entire week, as usual, and she was tired of it now. She trusted Stephen, there were no problems on that front, he was way too obsessed with his job to have time for affairs, but she was thoroughly sick of taking second place to his career. He was only editor of a newspaper, she always used to tell him when they still had that kind of relationship (you know, the one where people talk, really properly talk), no-one died, she'd joke, but then he would remind her that people did, that the stories he told could wreck or make a life, depending on his whim (or perhaps savagery, she'd thought) at the time. She often wondered how she could have married such a man - maybe it was because she'd met him when they were both students at university, before she'd had time to grow into who she wanted to be, instead of who he wanted her to be. He'd been behind her at the queue for the pay phones and they'd just got chatting and she'd thought he was quite nice, but not like that at the time, he'd been wearing a Chelsea shirt for a start. And after that they'd said hello to each other around the campus, in that polite way where you don't really know each other, until eventually one night he had come and chatted to her in the student bar, and they'd both known when they got it together that he was doing well for himself - and although he was keener than she was before she knew it they were seeing each other every day. Somehow by the final year they were even living together in a shared house and, apart from a brief split when he'd gone to America after they graduated (she'd put her foot down for once) when he came back he'd pursued her until she changed her mind, and then when they both moved to London he'd thought they may as well get a place together, they could just about afford a studio if they both pitched in, he'd said, and after that she'd never quite got round to dumping him again. And so here they were now, married with three children and happy, apparently. Juliette couldn't complain from a material point of view, the rented studio was long gone, their house was done up and beautiful, the kids were in private school, they had a place in Italy, and Stephen was making loads from having become a quasi-celebrity, appearing on late night game shows and being asked to present televised awards events. It was odd how other people always found him funnier than she ever had, they never had shared much of a sense of humour......